Scientific Evolution. 157 



Yet though they will not find their clergy distinguished, 

 they will find them universally as well acquainted with 

 physical science as will be the bulk of cultivated men not 

 specially devoted to it. They will thus be naturally en- 

 couraged to an increased confidence and trust in their 

 religious teachers, whilst the latter will demonstrate to the 

 laity (by the mere fact of the mode of life they have 

 chosen, for all their physically scientific culture) the really 

 neutral character of all physical science in its relations 

 with religion. Finally the clergy, having been compelled 

 by circumstances to make this closer acquaintance with 

 physical science, will know and be able to point out readily 

 and exactly what they may deem to have been the in- 

 ferential errors of the preceding period as well as to com- 

 bat more effectively such venerable conservatives as may 

 continue to reiterate arguments analogous to some of the 

 dysteleological * arguments of to-day. 



If the foregoing views are correct, it seems to follow 

 that, together with the changes anticipated, the Church's 

 ministers may not improbably regain much of that social 

 and political influence which they have at present lost. 

 Not that such influence will be exercised directly, as was 

 the case in the Middle Ages the process of division of 



* Dysteleology is a term which Professor Haeckel has devised 

 to denote the study of the "purposeless-ness" of organs. An argument 

 founded on such a conception, and relating to the appendix -vermifor- 

 mis, has already been noticed. 



